Evolving English

Belinda Webb has a very sensible post on the Guardian’s Mind your language blog responding to the Emma Thompson thing. She says:

“What makes people feel in the right to say that anyone who does not speak like them, or in the way they were taught, is wrong and “stupid”? What is stupid is the ignorance of such highly educated public figures who seem not to have realised that Britain’s greatest writers used slang and those words became part of our language… I am not saying that slang is a substitute for “standard” English, but should be recognised and capitalised upon for what it is – a love of communication and an inventiveness of speech that continues to make English one of the most interesting languages.”

She also plugs the British Library’s upcoming exhibition Evolving English, which sounds like a Very Good Thing.